A New direction

As I have already posted in previous entries, I’ve been really examining a lot of different elements in my life. I think in some measure its because I feel safe and cared for, having gotten married back in June. My marriage and all the ways it affects myself, Lonnie and well everything is a whole other blog post. Computers, those other partners that have become such an inseparable part of most of our lives (in such a short time). I don’t know anyone that doesn’t have a working relationship with at least three different computers, their phones as well as work and home machines. In a lot of ways they have become like family members. You may not like them but you can’t get rid of them. So back to my original posting. I have like most people been primarily a Windows user and then when I could afford them a Mac user. I have flirted with that bawdy mistress operating system, Linux. it was only ever a short term dalliance. She never satisfied me completely that is until recently. It started with my iMac and my Macbook pro’s motherboard dying at the same time. It moved from there to Microsoft moving from what I believed has been a generally good direction with Windows 8.1 to what seems to me another misstep with Windows 10. I have two Windows phones both of which I bought out of my love of an older technology Microsoft developed (and the seed for what has become Windows 8) Zune media player. Windows phones are things of beauty, they really are. The problem is that they just don’t have the market share like Android (who’s direction I really do like, despite the privacy concerns I have) or iPhones who are looking stale and dated like two week old bread. So my Macs died, Windows is moving in the wrong direction. I really felt like I had to take another look at Linux again. So I took the plunge and have loaded up one my laptops with Ubuntu. I couldn’t be happier. It feels light, pretty and does just what I want it to do, how I want it do it. Having sat with this system now for a bit of time. I feel pretty sure the difference between what didn’t work for me with Linux before and the reason why it does now is because of two primary factors. Chrome, which is a goddess send. Most of the apps I run are no longer installed in the traditional sense, they are on-line. This provides a host of benefits the most important in my estimation is that I can move between machines (windows, mac, Linux) without having to install and configure on each machine. This model is why Chromebooks work for the vast majority of people. The second is Cloud storage. I have several Terra bytes of information stored in the cloud. All of my documents, data files, pictures and music. This again allows me to use whatever app I want depending on the machine and access the same data without making multiple local copies. The next move after my contract is up is to move over to Android based phones. The only thing holding me back with that is iMessage. I message a lot, group messages, read message notifications, the other person typing, these are all important to me.